Friday, September 4, 2009

The 'Moth' and the 'Art of Making Pickles'

When I was very young, I was watching a telugu movie, where a prominent character in the movie (a veteran and successful business man at that) shares his mantra for success with his protégés – He goes something like – “A good business man sells salt in the forest and Mangoes at the coast, an intelligent businessman mashes them both, makes ‘Pickle’ and ‘Viola’, the pickles are sold at the coast and the forests too”. I carried along this mantra with me for a long time and still do.

At that point in time, I tagged the ideology to being a smart fellow (read innovative) and booking a decent profit. It took me nearly 2 decades, to take this simple idea and attribute it to ‘Value Creation’ (hmm or is it?). So how or why did the caterpillar become the butterfly (or at least a boring brown moth and pushing aside the facts of eventuality)?

However ladies and gentlemen, hold-onto-your-horses for a bit more please. Even before the metamorphosis happened, the world had already ground ‘Value-Creation’ as a concept, to a fine dust and gulped it down with green tea. ‘Value-creation’ was the name-of-the-game and was flying around everywhere from B-Schools to Businesses. Ok then ‘what-the-heck’ is wrong then? (Hmm reads like a line from ‘Kung-Fu Panda’)

The other day I was sitting back and thinking about the difficult times that we are in and the probable causes (read ways) that led to it. There are tons of thoughts out there, and each of them trying to decipher the “root causes” (rotten causes if you may like) of this debacle. Most of them end with a ‘Lessons to be learnt’ sermon. Even the good ones (at least most of them) end up talking about ‘smarter investments’, ‘better saving plans’ so on and so forth.

But then it hit me that the ‘pickle’ was just plain and simple – missing, or if the pickles were there, they were either too salty or too sour. So then it takes away the ‘creation’ part out of the equation and we are left with plain and pure ‘Value’. Does this mean that I now tag my ‘Pickles’ to ‘Value’ and not ‘Value Creation’ > THE MOTH TAKES FLIGHT.

Here is what the Moth is thinking; There must be a pickle for each of the assets (or as they were called earlier) that we acquire, if not already there. Hang-on, if it’s there, then it must have tasted real bad or even spoiled.

Right then, so does it mean that ‘The Art of Making Pickle’ is the Secret to success of the ‘the Secret sauce mango pickle’? (Here comes ‘Creation’ rushing back into the equation).

Here’s what the Moth is thinking: If we can manage to put a smile across the dude’s face every time he hits the bottle of pickle for as long as it lasts, then its ‘Value’ created and given too

Simple isn’t it, so why didn’t it work for us. The moth thinks, that if it werea Pickle maker and it dare buys its own pickles for the worth that it’s sold, then my pickles have ‘Value’.

Also means that the moth doesn’t start booking pickles sales just because it has a farm, where it plans to start a Mango farm, and has Butterfly cousin who is setting up a salt Unit down in LA. Nor is the moth ready for growing mangoes on the beach and/or sift for salt in the forest.

So there must be ways of making and selling good pickles in very business, the Moth being a Techie and is especially Interested in making the Tech-Pickle, so how do we make a fine Tech-Pickle?, no idea yet, but the Moth is definitely going to find out (or at least that’s the current itinerary).

Till then Adieus Amigos , catch you next time with the extremely spicy Tech-Pickle

1 comment:

Dear Vinil,First - Kudos for taking on this journey of self expression. And about the propositions purported, I quite like the analogy of markets and value points relating to beach,forest,salt & mangoes.

While I consume the trasformation of the (pickle)value creation outlined I am only assuming that :

1.It takes time to season the pickle to a tangy delight.Seasoning also need a dash of garlic,mustard & gingley oil.

2.The storage vessel of the value mixture is also of paramount importance.

3.Lastly the value created goes well when consumed with other assortments like hot rice or chappatis.